Guardians
by RavenSong314
Summary: There are seventeen of us. As Guardians, we each control an element. We're supposedly supposed to maintain balance in the world, like the old ones did. As the world tears itself apart, though... I have to accept that we're not all on the same side. This isn't going to solve itself. There's a war in the making.
1. Prologue

We are Guardians.

If we were in some wonderful alternate universe where I'd had the fortune to _not_ be a Guardian and you'd asked me what a Guardian is, here's what I might've told you:

In every generation, there are seventeen. One for each element. These guardians are dispersed throughout the world, keeping balance and maintaining peace, blah, blah, blah.

A new guardian only appears when the old one dies. There's some sort of power transfer that no one really understands that happens after they die. Some kid gets chosen as the new Guardian. They get freaky awesome powers.

Some say that the power of the elements will only go to those that have a great destiny. Others say that it is the power itself that makes their destinies great. Some say that it's random, a matter of luck – though whether it's good or bad luck is debatable. (Hint: these days, the answer is definitely bad luck.)

Maybe a decade ago, in less than a year, all seventeen guardians disappeared. Or at least that's what they thought, at first. Then they all started turning up dead. Somehow, some group of lunatics had managed to organize the systematic murders of the most powerful group of people on the face of the planet.

Why? Who the hell knows? It certainly wasn't for the fame, because no one claimed responsibility. And no one tried to take over the world in their absence, either.

Even without the guardians keeping the peace, the world didn't end. Life went on. However, things changed. Nature basically decided that if there's no Guardians to regulate it, it's just going to go nuts with natural disasters. Pokémon went a bit crazy too, even attacking humans without provocation. There aren't nearly as many trainers as there used to be. It's considered 'too dangerous' now.

Anyways, the children that receive the power of the guardians don't realize it at first. There's no giant glowing symbol or sudden enlightenment that tells them that they've been chosen. It's nearly impossible to tell until the kid starts bending steel and flying across the room.

There are hints sometimes, though. Favorite colors, things like that.

Their power awakens over time. They can't do much of anything out of the ordinary until they're at least ten. Even then, they usually need help from an older guardian to learn to actually use it properly. If they had to figure it out by themselves, it might take years.

It's too bad that all the old Guardians are dead, then. The new ones? Sucks for them. They have to figure it out by themselves.

When new Guardians are chosen, it's usually a kid between five and ten. And it was ten years ago that the old ones died, so they'd be teenagers by now. They probably know that they're Guardians. They _should_ be bringing the world back to normal.

But of course it's not that easy. I mean, how the hell would they know how to do it? There's no one with any experience left alive anymore.

Even so, I wouldn't have expected for things to actually get worse. The weather recently has been complete chaos, and there's no sign of it inproving any time soon.

There have been some pretty wild theories flying around trying to explain this. Some are ridiculous and entertaining to listen to. One of the most widely believed ones is that the group that had killed the previous guardians is starting to kill the new ones.

But that doesn't really explain why it's getting worse. Recently, there's also been a major increase in pokémon attacks. Those attacks usually happen with big packs of pokemon of the same type. In addition to that, natural disasters are happening more and more often, to the point where there's definitely nothing 'natural' about them.

The rumor that's gained more of a following recently is that some of the new Guardians basically decided to ignore what they're supposed to do and instead took a 'screw order, let's destroy the world' point of view.

The fate of the world has been put into the hands of seventeen teenagers.

Yeah, I can just tell this is going to end well.

* * *

**This is just the prologue. The real story will be told from the pov of various major characters.**

**OC submissions are closed.**


	2. Prologue 2: Kyra

I guess my life changed the day that I decided that I liked the color pink.

Of course no one, not even me, really thought that was unusual. I mean, it's pretty hard to find a seven-year-old girl whose favorite color _isn't_ pink. But there was just something about that color… It was more than just 'pretty.' It seemed almost _special_ somehow.

I suppose I only started to realize what that meant a few years later.

There were a couple of kids that I knew that loved to play a sort of 20-question game where you try to guess what pokémon that the other is thinking of. One day, they asked me to try it.

It was strange. Each time, I figured it out faster. It got to the point where I would just name a pokémon in the first turn. And I was right _every single time._

It made me happy. I skipped home to tell my parents about how I had annihilated my friends at that game. But instead of doing the normal "Oh, you're so talented," parent-child self-esteem boost thing, they just kind of looked at each other. They almost seemed... worried.

I remember my dad leaning forward and asking me, "Can you guess what pokémon I'm thinking of?"

I was about to say Salemence, my dad's favorite pokémon, but I somehow knew it would be wrong. So I spent a couple seconds staring at him, the gears in my ten-year-old brain whirring.

And then I knew exactly what it was.

"Lunatone! It's Lunatone!" I exclaimed. "Was I right? Was I right?"

"…Yes. Yeah, you were. Good job, Kyra." His lack of enthusiasm did a wonderful job of crushing my exitement. He exchanged another look with my mom. "Mommy and I are going to go talk about something, okay, sweetie?"

So they went to the kitchen to talk. Despite my confusion, I was happy enough playing with my toys in my room. I got bored eventually, and started playing with marbles.

I'm still not really sure why I've always liked marbles so much. I guess it_ is_ a pretty strange toy for a kid. My room wasn't really the most organized thing in the world when I was a kid, and I remember something my parents used to joke about whenever I couldn't find them.

"_Aww, look at that. Little Kyra's lost her marbles." _For the longest time, I didn't know why they found it so funny. It took me a while to figure out that 'losing your marbles' meant going crazy, but after that I would always hyperactively run around like a lunatic whenever they said it and we would all laugh.

I remember that I was having a lot of fun playing with the marbles that day. They almost seemed to curve in the directions that I wanted them to. I was in the process of working on a new trick when my parents walked in.

They were about to say something, but I interrupted them, wanting to show them what I had just figured out how to do. I remember hoping that I wouldn't screw it up in front of them.

The trick only involved two marbles. And only one of them actually moved. My parents silently decided that what they wanted to say could wait until I showed it to them.

I placed a single marble in the middle of the floor. Then I stepped back and took a second one – a pink one, my favorite – and prepared to send it rolling.

I aimed it to the far left of the stationary marble. I'm pretty sure my parents just thought I missed at first. But as soon as the marble started moving, I stared at it, concentrating as hard as I could.

Without warning, the pink marble veered off course and settled into a circular orbit around the other marble. My little trick had worked perfectly.

Beaming, I looked up at my parents. In doing so, I lost my concentration and the pink marble lost its orbit. It rolled towards my dad's feet.

My dad stooped down and picked up my marble. He held it in his open palm, staring at it. My mom was staring at me, her hand over her open mouth. I was, once again, very confused. They were acting really strange today.

Finally, my dad broke the uncomfortable silence.

"Hey, Kyra. Do you want to hear a story?" His voice was unsteady. He sat on my bed and patted the spot beside him, signaling for me to sit down as well.

I sat beside him. "…Sure, daddy." I was a little upset at their reaction (or lack thereof, really) to my super-awesome trick.

"All right then. Let's see, where to start?" I could already tell that it was going to be a long story. But my dad told great stories, and the long ones were the best.

"Once upon a time, there were these… special people. They were known as Guardians…"

* * *

**There's going to be one or two more prologue chapters until I get enough OCs to start the real story. Here's who I have so far:**

**Ian Hale – 16 – Good – Fighting**

**Evelyn Myers – 18 – Good – Water **

**Robin Archer – 18 – Good – Steel**

**Levi Shann – 19 – Good – Ground **

**Reilly MacMahon – 18 – Neutral – Poison **

**Magnolia Trinks – 15 – Evil – Grass**


	3. Prologue 3: Robin

**This'll be the last prologue chapter, I promise. **

**This prologue is from the point of view of the person I chose to be the leader of the good guys! **

* * *

I spent a lot of time at the Canalave Library when I was little. I grew up reading stories about knights and chivalry. Those books gave me a goal – I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to help people, just like the characters in the stories. Of course, some might say that I was trying to live in a fantasy world. But that didn't stop me.

I was eight when the Guardians died. I'm not sure if I really knew what was going on, but I remember being sad. I think I used to look at them as if they were superheroes.

There were plenty of books about the Guardians in the library. I tried to read those, but the concepts and the vocabulary were way too advanced for my eight-year-old brain. I had my dad explain it to me instead.

I always liked learning about the Guardians. I remember thinking that the way their power transferred from one person to another was really cool. It made me feel better. After all, the superheroes weren't gone. They were just different people now.

* * *

My dad ran a ferry service to Iron Island for tourists and the occasional trainer. He told me once that before the whole thing with the Guardians, there used to be a lot more customers. Now, he said, they're afraid that the pokémon there might attack them.

I'd seen the news, of course. Pokémon attacks were becoming more frequent and more violent. There weren't many trainers anymore. It was just too dangerous.

However, in the countless hours I'd spent at Iron Island, helping my dad run the ferry, I'd never seen a single pokémon attack anyone… at least not without provocation. It could have just been the seclusion from the mainland, but that wouldn't have made sense either. It wasn't like the attacks were something that was just happening in Sinnoh; they were happening all over the world.

Even though my dad always told me to stay away from the pokémon, I usually just ignored him and explored Iron Island's caves to my heart's content. I wasn't scared of the pokémon there. As long as I didn't bother them, they would leave me alone.

So one day, when I was helping my dad with the ferry, we got a few of those annoying tourists that complain about _everything_. There was someone who was complaining about how the wind from the moving ferry was messing up her hair, another who was saying that it was too hot, and yet another who was complaining about how the ferry "was, like, fourteen and a half seconds late."

I think I was about eleven years old at the time.

Everyone disembarked when we got to Iron Island, as usual. Dad stayed with the boat while I went to explore the caves some more. He shouted "Be careful, Robin!" as I ran off, same as always. He pretty much let me do whatever I wanted there as long as I didn't hurt myself and made it back to the ferry on time. It was fine with me. The ferry left every hour, which gave me plenty of time.

A couple of the annoying tourists (who, thankfully, had stopped complaining and were therefore much less annoying) actually seemed interested in the deeper parts of the cave. Most people just stuck to the entrance, where there were rarely any pokémon. I decided to give them a little tour of my favorite areas.

They seemed unsure about being guided through a supposedly dangerous cave by an eleven-year-old boy, but they didn't mention it.

I tried to be as good of a tour guide as possible, talking about the cave's history as an ore mine, how it became abandoned, and the types of pokémon that had moved in afterwards. They seemed pretty impressed that I knew as much as I did.

I was actually having a lot of fun as a tour guide. I was just thinking that I should do it more often when one of the stupid tourists took out one of those cheap disposable film cameras. The kind with a really bright flash.

There were some low lights in the cave – they gave off enough light so you could easily see where you were going, but not so much that it would annoy the pokémon that lived there.

I wasn't even sure what she was trying to take a picture of. Really, the only things there were rocks, some barrels, and a couple small piles of if I-beams. But once the flash went off, everyone in my little group suddenly became aware of something else in the cave.

There was a huge group of Golbat on the ceiling.

Or rather, they used to be on the ceiling. By that point, they were swarming around the cave. Of course, the tourists started screaming and panicking despite my efforts to make them shut up and calm down.

At first I thought I was imagining it, but I thought I could hear the tone of the group of Golbat's cries turn from anger to something more like panic. I began to feel quite panicky myself as they fled the room.

The tourists, stupid as ever, seemed to think it was over. Their nervous _'I can't believe I didn't die' _half-laugh was the only sound in the room. Then came a small rumble. Then a larger one. The ground was shaking. The tourists finally shut up.

Suddenly, the cave wall exploded. More specifically, a gigantic Steelix crashed through it. Even through the sheer panic of the situation, I figured that all of the Golbat's cries and the screaming had probably woken it up.

I'll be honest – At that point, I wanted to run. A mob of Golbat is nothing compared to an angry Steelix. But I couldn't leave the tourists behind, even if they _were_ stupid and annoying. They'd never find their way out of the cave, especially not with a Steelix on their tail. So that's what I told myself: I can't leave them.

That's not what a hero would do.

While they fled to the back of the room, I stood my ground. It's not an easy thing to do when you're up against a thirty foot iron snake. Surprisingly, it didn't immediately eat me like I thought it would. Instead, it stopped in front of me and roared so loudly that rocks fell from the ceiling.

It was at that point that I realized two things: One, Steelix breath smells like sulfur. And two, I had absolutely _no idea_ what I was doing. I'm sure that there's probably something you're supposed to do in that kind of situation, but if there was, I certainly didn't know it. I just hoped it would let me live long enough so that I could explain myself.

"Uhh…" _Yeah,_ I thought, _great start, genius. _"Look, we… uh, we didn't mean to wake you up. It-it was an accident. We're sorry! P-please don't-" The Steelix gave a low growl. I stopped talking. To my surprise and relief, it started backing away.

However, my relief was short-lived. After it had gone back a fair distance, it gave another huge roar and started charging. My stomach sank and my heart jumped into my throat. It was going to attack.

My mind went into overdrive. But instead of doing something useful, it decided to be useless and tried to figure out what attack the Steelix was using. _Tackle? Maybe Take Down or Rollout?_ I felt a wave of nausea when I thought of what would happen if it used Crunch.

_Snap out of it!_ I screamed in my head. _It doesn't matter what it's using! This thing would kill you if it used Splash!_

By that time, the Steelix was about a second and a half from breaking every bone in my body, so pure impulse and adrenaline took over. And apparently, impulse equals grabbing the thing closest to me and clobbering the Steelix in the face with it.

I was honestly surprised that it stopped it. I was even more surprised when the Steelix backed away and didn't come back again. But neither of those were anywhere close to the surprise I felt when I realized what I was holding.

Somehow, I had been able to pick up a giant steel I-beam. With one hand. It didn't even feel that heavy.

The tourists were staring at me, but I ignored them. I suddenly felt very tired. I dropped the beam and sat on it. My heart was beating like crazy. It was my turn for the post-near-death-experience laugh.

And you know what? I felt like absolute crap, but I was happy. I felt a smile spread across my face. I had done something great, just like the characters in the books that I loved to read.

I had been a hero.

* * *

**Congratulations to ****_ObiwanDS_**** for his character, Robin Archer, Guardian of Steel! He will be the leader of the good guys, so I dedicated this prologue to him.**

**Here's the final OC results!**

**Normal: Dominic Campbell – 17 – Evil – minor **– _Ashley Eon_

**Fire: Elliot Crowley – 15 – Good – minor **– _zombicidal-maniac_

**Water: Evelyn Myers – 18 – Good – Major** _-Ashley Eon_

**Electric: Kelly Rhodes – 16 - ? – minor **- _Mine_

**Grass: Magnolia Trinks – 15 – Evil – minor **– _Demolition Panda_

**Ice: Mica Hastings – 16 – Good – minor **– _LeafxGreenx3_

**Fighting: Ian Hale – 16 – Good – Major** - _A Humble Wordsmith_

**Poison: Reilly MacMahon – 18 – Neutral – minor **- _ByTheFireplaceInWhite_

**Ground: Levi Shann – 19 – Good – minor **- _Makaidos_

**Flying: Mikoto Kazehana – 16 – Good – minor** - _Fenikkusumaru_

**Psychic: Kira Sacher – 17 - ? – Major **- _Mine_

**Bug: Issac Trent – 18 – Neutral – minor **-_ Honeyman_

**Rock: Mayzie Saenz – 16 – Neutral – minor – **_Kirbella and Illusion Fox_

**Ghost: Eric Maroot – 19 – Evil – minor** – _Le Roach_

**Dragon: Kyle Johnson – 17 – Evil – minor – **_AnimeQueen1260_

**Dark: Jake Thompson – 18 - ? – minor **- _Mine_

**Steel: Robin Archer – 18 – Good – Major **- _ObiwanDS_

**A note about the majors and minors – just because someone is a minor character doesn't mean that they won't be doing anything important. It really just means that the story won't be told from their point of view. **

**Thanks to every author who sent in an OC, and congratulations to the authors whose OCs were chosen!**


	4. Chapter 1: Evelyn

The end of the world as I knew it started with a phone call.

It was a nice day, which I guess is really the norm for Sunyshore City, so I went down to the beach for a couple hours. The beach was almost always crowded with sunbathers and whatnot, but the ocean itself was usually fairly devoid of people. Heh… only the most courageous individuals would _dare_ to swim out into the deadly waters beyond the safety of the shore. Scaredy-cats. I rolled my eyes at the thought.

After an uneventful hour or two of swimming, I went back home. When I got there, my mother had this to say to me:

"Evelyn, you got a call while you were out."

I waited a moment, but she didn't elaborate. "And…?"

"He said to call him back when you got the chance. I wrote the number down over there," she said, gesturing in the direction of the notepad by the video phone. I preferred to make phone calls in the privacy of my own room, so I ripped off the sheet with the number on it and headed up there.

I powered up my laptop and selected the phone application, which more or less worked like Skype. I tried to call the number my mom had written down, but the line was busy.

"Figures…" I muttered. After a moment's thought, however, I was actually kind of glad the call hadn't gotten through. I was still wearing my bathing suit, and I really needed to take a shower.

After fixing both of those issues (and eating), I tried the number again. It rang once… twic-

"Hello?" A brown haired, blue eyed boy about my age appeared on my computer screen. I didn't know him.

"…Hi?" I wasn't exactly sure what to say. "You called me earlier?"

"Oh, right! Let's see…" I could see him frantically flipping through a notebook. "Umm… You're Evelyn Myers, right?"

"Yes…"

"Okay. Great. So, um, I, uh…" He looked nervous, but took a deep breath in an attempt to regain his composure. "Anyway, I'm writing this, um, report. And I was wondering if you'd like to take a survey."

A survey. Really? That was what this was about? I probably would've hung up on him, but I didn't want to seem rude. I was about to politely refuse when he continued talking, explaining what the survey was about. "Well, you've heard of the Guardians, right? I've been doing some research, and I _blah blah blah_…" I stopped listening after he mentioned the Guardians, absorbed in my own thoughts.

I knew I was a Guardian. I've known for a long time now. But I've never really told anyone outside of my immediate family, so there was no way this reporter person could possibly know. It… was probably just a coincidence. I'm not sure why, but I somehow got it into my head that it would look suspicious if I refused. I decided to just take the stupid survey and be done with it.

"Uh, hello?" He waved his hand in front of his camera. "Evelyn? Did you hear me?"

Whoops. I realized he must've asked me something while I was ignoring him. "What? Oh, no, sorry. Can you repeat that?"

"I said, 'The new Guardians should know who they are by now. Why do you think they haven't come forward?'"

That one was easy. It was the reason _I_ hadn't, after all. "That group that killed the last Guardians. The new ones are probably scared that they'll go after them too."

"All right. Um, next question…" There was something about him that was bothering me, but I wasn't sure what. "Okay, so there have been a lot of natural disasters. You know, fires, earthquakes, flooding…" I hoped he didn't see me cringe at that last one. "Why do you think they, along with the pokémon attacks, have been getting worse?"

I was pretty sure I knew why. Just because we could use our powers doesn't mean we knew how to control them properly in the sense of keeping the world in balance. I mean, I've done my research about the Guardians. The older ones were supposed to teach us about that kind of stuff. Kind of hard to do when you're dead, though.

Plus… If the rumors about some of the new Guardians turning evil were true…

I realized I couldn't really say any of that without looking like I knew too much, but I didn't like to lie. "I… don't really know? I mean, I have no idea."

He nodded. "That's fine."

The next few questions went on in pretty much the same way. I tried to give as generic answers as possible.

"Next, um, what-"

"Hold on." I really didn't like these questions. They were too opinionated, too specific. And _way_ too relevant to my life. And I had realized what was bothering me. "You're not even writing any of my answers down. Who are you? And how did you get this number, anyway?"

I definitely caught him off guard. He didn't say it out loud, but what he was thinking was very clearly expressed on his face: _Crap._ He was silent for a moment. Then something seemed to occur to him.

"Which one are you?"

I tried my best to look confused, but I was fairly certain it wasn't going to work due to the fact that I could barely mask the panicked expression on my face. "Excuse me?" Had he really figured it out that easily?

He gave a heavy sigh. "I guess it's only fair that I answer your questions first. My name's Robin Archer. I got your number through the trainer database. Now, you know exactly what I'm asking, so answer the question."

"You're not really a reporter, are you…? I mean, you're only, like, twenty."

"Eighteen," he corrected me, "and me? Being a reporter?" He smiled and shook his head. "That would be a disaster. And by the way, your evasion of my question is pretty much telling me all I need to know, so you might as well answer it."

Common sense told me to hang up, right now. I mean, I was about to tell my biggest secret to a guy on the phone that I had known for a total of maybe five minutes, if even that. But honestly, I was curious. There had to be a reason he was so interested in the Guardians.

And I was pretty sure I knew why.

"You first."

His answer came after a moment of hesitation.

"Steel."

_Well,_ I thought,_ here we go._

"…Water."

There was a short period of awkward silence after that in which I had a little bit of time to think about this. I had never actually met another Guardian before. It was a weird feeling. I wasn't really sure what I was expecting, but he just looked so… normal. It made me wonder how he'd managed to find me.

"You said you got my number through the trainer database. So what were you doing, calling every registered trainer in the world?" I asked. "Seems like it would be a long process."

"Well, I tried to narrow it down. I'm only calling people that are both in the right age group and specialize in one type of pokémon." He shrugged. "It's not perfect, I know. Some of us might not even be trainers. And a lot of people don't want to take the survey. But I figured that this would be better than calling all those people and saying 'Oh, hi. Are you a Guardian, by any chance? No? Okay then, thanks anyway.' I mean, you were interested in it because it was about the Guardians, right?" Admittedly, I was, and I nodded. "So I was hoping that any other Guardians from the people on my list would be too."

"And how many people are on the list?"

"Umm," He checked his notebook, "about two hundred. More or less. There's only about ten left, though."

There was a question I wanted to ask, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to know the answer. I finally worked up the courage to say it. "…Why are you trying to find us?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Don't you watch the news? Things are getting worse." He was right. Things _were_ getting worse. A lot worse. "I figured if all of us could get together, we might be able to do something about it."

"'All of us?' How many do you know? What are we going to do?"

"Besides you, I've contacted three. No, wait. Four." He glanced at his notebook again. "Fire, Ice, Flying, and Ground," he said. He scribbled something down and added, "and now we have Water." So, in total, there were six. Out of seventeen. I guess it could be worse.

"Do you know any?" He asked, and I shook my head.

"That's okay." He said. "As for what we're doing…" He looked up and spread his arms in a gesture of uncertainty. "No clue whatsoever. But whatever we _do_ end up doing, it's got to be better than nothing." He had a point there.

"So… What do I need to do?"

"Well, if you can, we're going to try to meet in Veilstone City around noon tomorrow."

"Veilstone's… a big city." I'd passed through it a couple times, but I didn't really know my way around there very well.

"At the department store."

"…It's a big mall."

He thought for a moment. "Top floor. I think that level's usually pretty empty. Do you think you can make it?"

I nodded. I had the same weird feeling as when I had first found out Robin was a Guardian. This just felt… almost normal. Like arranging lunch with my friends.

Except I was planning to meet with five of the Guardians. I was going to meet with a bunch of superpowered teenagers in an effort to save the world.

If only I knew what I was getting myself into.

* * *

When I set out for Veilstone City the next day, it was raining. I didn't see many other people as I rode my bike through Routes 222 and 214.

The weather had been pretty crazy lately, after all. Thunderstorms, hurricanes, droughts, blizzards, acid rain… It could be a hundred degrees one day and be snowing the next. It was completely unpredictable.

But thankfully, today's weather was just a calm, steady downpour. The sky was a monochromatic dull grey, and the temperature was a little on the cool side. It wasn't that bad. I liked the rain, but I was glad to get out of it when I reached the Veilstone Department Store.

I checked my watch and found that it was still a quarter to twelve. _Might as well head up early,_ I thought.

The fifth floor was basically a rest area with a small food court, a bunch of tables, and a few vending machines. I attempted to not awkwardly stand around by buying a drink from one of the vending machines and pretending to be very interested in the wood grain of the table I sat at.

When I wasn't staring at the table, I looked around the room. Robin had been right; it wasn't very crowded here. There were only about ten or fifteen people, and a lot of them were teenagers. I wondered which ones were Guardians.

I supposed I'd find out soon enough.

* * *

**Thanks to author ****_Ashley Eon_**** for her character Evelyn Myers, Guardian of Water!**

**I know this is pretty short and not much happens in it, but it should pick up within the next couple chapters.**

**In Chapter 2, we'll probably be meeting the rest of the group!**

**Thanks for reading!**


	5. Chapter 2: Ian

**I know I said we'd be meeting the rest of the group but... nope.**

**Look, I ****_tried_**** to not go all 'OC overload' on you people. I attempted to do something different, but I'm not sure how well it'll work. There are a lot of characters that are present in the chapter, but not all of them actually get named.**

**Anyways, meet this chapter's POV character - Ian Hale, Guardian of Fighting. He's sixteen years old and lives in Veilstone City. **

**And his life is about to get completely screwed over.**

* * *

It's funny. I used to like the rain.

It was coming down so hard that it was like a continuous dump of water from the heavens. It hadn't turned into a real storm yet, but you could feel the tension rising in the air. It was only a matter of time before the dark clouds above my head would discharge all of their excess electricity. Yet another lovely day in Veilstone.

So, being the brilliant person I am, I decided to go for a walk.

I mean, it didn't seem like that bad of an idea at the time. I was feeling like I spent too much time inside, so I wanted to spend some time in this so-called 'great outdoors.' And, as I said before, I liked the rain.

The streets and sidewalks were nearly empty, which was nice. As I could see from peeking out from under my umbrella, the city actually looked pretty amazing. The sky had become so dark that most buildings had their lights on, and a lot of the skyscrapers were so tall that their tops were lost in the grey haze that the rain created. You could just imagine them reaching up into the sky for miles and miles…

BOOM.

I was suddenly distracted by a loud explosion. At first I thought it was just thunder, but it didn't sound like the shark crack or the low rumble that thunder usually makes. Besides, I hadn't even seen any lightning yet. It was just… an explosion. You know, boom. Blam. Kablooey. A few seconds later, was another noise similar to the first one, and this time I figured out that it was coming from only a block or two north of me.

As I was doing the logical thing – making my way towards the origin of the explosions – the first bolt of lightning struck. Now, I'm not sure if you realize just how much noise lightning can make. Especially when you're outside and it hits a building that's only about fifty yards away from you. But it's pretty freaking loud, and makes a sound very different than the first one I had heard.

When I got to the next street over, I was met with a weird scene. There were a lot of people running out of the Veilstone Mall, many of which were yelling into their cell phones.

It was _probably_ because the top floor was engulfed in flames. Just maybe. How something could possibly catch on fire when it was raining this hard, I didn't know. But, as I saw a second later, there was another explosion from that same floor. Most likely the source of the fire.

In yet another show of my vast amount of common sense, I pushed past the people at the entrance of the building to see what was going on up there.

I was a Guardian, after all. From what I'd heard, it was supposed to be my duty to protect people. Or something like that. And apparently, 'protecting people' somehow fit into the category of 'running into flaming buildings.'

Have you ever been inside an empty mall? It's kind of creepy. Especially when the electricity is all flickery and you still don't know what's exploding four floors above you.

The lights cut off completely before I got to the third floor.

By the time I got near the last floor, I could hear a lot of shouting. There was a chunk of the ceiling missing.

And the fifth floor? It was pure chaos.

* * *

Imagine that you're in a mall's food court. It's a nice, organized area with high ceilings and lots of open space.

Then imagine that the lightning from a massive storm outside had torn a gaping hole in the roof and rain is pouring through it.

Parts of the room are flooding, and other parts are on fire. The only reason the room isn't completely filled with smoke is the previously mentioned hole in the ceiling.

Chunks of the floor are gone; either burned away or fallen to the floor below.

Then imagine what would happen if a dozen people spontaneously decided to have an all-out, no-regulations-whatsoever pokémon battle in the middle of it.

Imagine their thirty or so pokémon turning the food court you're standing in into a massive battlefield. (Actually, when I got there, quite a few of them were already lying unconscious on the floor. But there were still at least twenty of them, and their attacks were flying _everywhere_.) The insane trainers that had started the fight were constantly ducking behind overturned tables and other debris just to avoid getting hit, and were still shouting orders to their pokémon.

Sometimes strong attacks collided with walls or each other and blew up – the source of the explosions I had heard earlier.

Imagine yourself, the moment you enter the room, immediately having to dodge things including (but not limited to): fireballs, shards of ice, chunks of rock, flying furniture, and large vines that had somehow grown from the decorative plants in the dining area.

And then you should have a pretty good idea of what the fifth floor of the Veilstone Department Store looked like.

* * *

I wasn't really sure what I had been planning to do when I got there.

I didn't think they had noticed me yet, so I tried to figure things out from a relatively safe vantage point behind some fast food place's counter.

There were clearly two sides to the battle; that much I could see. And as much as I wanted to jump into the battle, I wasn't sure which side I should be fighting on. There were about half a dozen people on each, and it _definitely_ wasn't a friendly match. They were ordering their pokémon to attack the trainers on the opposing side whenever they got the chance.

And, as I slowly realized, their pokémon weren't the only ones doing the battling. I wasn't sure if my mind was just misprocessing the information with everything that was going on in that room, but I could've sworn I saw people doing some pretty freaky stuff.

At one point, a Linoone used an attack that looked like Take Down or Giga Impact or something like that and sent a redheaded girl crashing through a window. But, instead of falling to her death like a normal person would, she simply stopped in midair, turned around, and flew back into the battle.

Sometimes the water pooling on the floor from the rain coming through the hole in the roof would suddenly rise in a large wave and wash someone across the room. At first I thought it was a pokémon doing it, but I'd noticed that it had only happened whenever an older girl – a different one, not the one that fell through the window – was near it.

There were fires burning in a bunch of places, and there was a younger boy that was constantly using them to his advantage – he was using them as cover, and actually picked up and threw a few burning objects as flaming projectiles, all without actually burning himself.

Was my luck really_ that_ messed up?

These people were Guardians, too. And they were fighting each other. It was really a wonder that this building was still standing.

Especially with the lightning.

Every couple of minutes, a huge bolt of the superheated electric energy would blast down from the sky directly into a girl about my age. And if I thought that thunder made a lot of noise from a couple streets away at street level, then hearing it from the same room was just ridiculously loud. The girl was standing near the hole in the roof, staring at the sky and getting shocked by insane amounts of electricity, but wasn't doing much other than that. Her three electric pokémon were preventing anyone from getting anywhere near her.

She looked like she was concentrating, getting ready to do something. And judging by how much her blond hair was standing up from excess static electricity, it was going to be big.

I nearly had a heart attack when someone else decided to use the counter I was behind to get out of the path of a Flygon's Flamethrower. She was short, had brown eyes and long brown hair, was about my age, and looked about as shocked to find someone else here as I was.

"What the hell-?"

"What?" I could barely hear her over everything else that was going on, plus I think I was still partially deaf from the thunder.

She held up a hand. "Look, never mind." She quickly glanced over the counter and ducked behind it again. "I'll just assume you're on our side since you haven't tried to kill me yet. Who are you?"

"Ian Hale."

"Guardian of…?"

"Fighting."

She nodded. "Great. Try to take out the normal type. I think he's… that one." She pointed to the opposite side of the room at an older boy with black hair. "Gotta go." She vaulted over the counter, landing in a huge puddle. As the water splashed up, she waved her hand over it. The water droplets immediately froze and were flung through the air, directly into someone else's face. It looked rather painful.

Using my amazing powers of logic, I managed to deduce that she was the Guardian of Ice.

All I could really guess from my short conversation with her was to attack normal types and not attack ice types. Assuming I could trust her at all. The uncertainty of it all was killing me, but I didn't really have many other options.

Anyways, finally having a proper target in this crazy battle, I jumped out from behind the counter and sent out two of my pokémon. It was too bad that the guy I was trying to get to was on the other side of the room past fires, a bunch of pokémon, and chunks of the roof.

I yelled out, "Gallade, Psycho cut! Lucario, use Force Palm! Clear a path!"

Unfortunately, while they were busy doing that, a Bisharp using Psycho Cut came out of nowhere and sent me flying across the room. It was only slightly less painful than I would've imagined it to be. I swear, that thing probably would've slashed my head off if it hadn't been attacked by a passing Togekiss's Aura Sphere. I mean, seriously. Have you ever seen a Bisharp? They're at least five feet tall, and they basically have a ribcage made of axes.

I was just getting up when a sudden bright light filled the room, coming from the direction of the electric girl. I froze so I wouldn't end up falling through one of the holes in the floor, and I think everyone else did the same.

There was a short period of silence when everyone was blinded by it. The abrupt lack of noise was eerie. All that you could hear was the pouring rain and the crackling fires.

As far as I could tell, it seemed to have been some kind of electric discharge, but… it hadn't really done any damage. All that I felt from it was a faint tingling. What was that supposed to be? An electric form of Flash?

I definitely wasn't expecting to see what I saw after finally getting my eyes to adjust from the light.

All of the pokémon were gone.

_What?_ I reached for the pokeballs of the pokémon I had sent out. It was strange. Somehow, they had both been recalled. And when I tried to send them out again, the pokeball didn't work. I tried a different one with the same result. They were about as functional as rocks.

Was _that_ what that light had been for? I looked over at the electric girl. She looked like she was dizzy, but she had a smile of satisfaction on her face.

The other side had clearly been expecting that to happen, while the ice girl's (and apparently, also my) side was caught off guard with suddenly having to fight without our pokémon. It was only seconds before the fighting started again.

The first thing I had to do to avoid getting my head taken off was duck as a huge thorny vine swung just over my head. The tan, dark-haired girl controlling it was fairly young. For a brief moment, I wondered how someone like her could have ended up here.

And then some tall guy threw a giant blue fireball at me. Not fun.

Honestly, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing. As the Guardian of Fighting, I had a pretty good stamina and could handle myself in a fistfight pretty well, but from what I'd seen, most of the other people here could attack with a _much_ larger range. It was really all I could do to not die in a big fiery explosion.

Without the pokémon, there were less objects and attacks flying around the room, which made it easier to keep track of what was going on. It was a lot quieter now that the lightning had stopped.

Having less noise it also made it so that, a few seconds later, everyone could hear sirens.

Of course. The people I had seen running out of the mall earlier had called the police, or the fire department, or an ambulance or something. I guess that technically _is_ the proper thing to do when malls start exploding.

But I didn't think any of us wanted to be anywhere near the police, considering we'd pretty much just demolished the food court. Plus, indoor pokémon battles are more or less illegal, except for certain places that had special permits. This mall? Definitely wasn't one of them.

…Not to mention it was still on fire.

Overall… it'd probably be pretty hard to explain.

The six people on the other side didn't seem eager to leave us alone, but they looked like they wanted even less to do with the police than we did. An older boy with dark clothes and white hair rolled his eyes in irritation, then turned around and walked straight through a wall. The rest of them used the door.

Meanwhile, we were just sort of standing there. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to move first.

"What are you waiting for?" I asked. "We need to get out of here!"

A brown-haired boy, who seemed to be the leader by the way the rest of them looked to him for direction, crossed his arms and turned to face me. "I'm sorry, but who _are_ you, exactly?" He sounded suspicious. I suppose I would be too, if some random guy showed up out of nowhere.

"-uh, he's with us, Robin." It was the ice girl from earlier. "I-I'll explain later."

"All right, fine. He's got a point, anyway; I don't think the police will be very… understanding about this whole situation. Going downstairs isn't really an option." He looked around for a moment, then pointed to a window on the side of the building opposite the street.

There was a gap between the mall and the tall building next to it, which had a fire escape on its outer wall. Robing spoke again. "Hopefully that'll work. Let's see… it's still raining. Evelyn, can you hold water in place so Mica can freeze a bridge for us?"

Evelyn, the girl that I had seen making the waves earlier, and the ice gi – Mica – nodded. "I'll try."

I hoped that the police or firefighters or whatever wouldn't actually reach this floor for another couple of minutes. They would probably have to put out fires on the lower floors and get past all the debris, so we didn't have to worry about them. Yet.

It took an uncomfortably long amount of time (which in reality was only about thirty seconds) for Mica to solidify the water bridge. I think she mentioned something about big masses of water being harder to freeze, but in the end it looked sturdy enough.

We went across one at a time. The girl who had fallen out of the window earlier went first, probably because she was the least likely to die if the bridge broke. It held, though.

And while Robin's ice bridge/fire escape idea was actually pretty good, it's kind of hard to think of it that way when ice is the only thing separating you from a five-story drop to the pavement. It was impossible not to look down because you had to watch your feet – the ice was incredibly slippery, especially with it wet from the rain.

Fortunately for me and everyone else, we didn't die. However, the rain had melted the ice a lot by the time the last person had crossed it, and it was starting to crack.

The boy who had been diving through fire earlier melted the ice so its pieces wouldn't hit the ground with a giant crash and give us away.

After that, we went down the fire escape and joined the growing crowd near the base of the mall. There was some evidence of a small fight there. Cracked pavement, broken glass, overgrown plants, etc. It looked like the other group had just gone right through the police.

And I knew I was just being paranoid, but I felt like the crowd was watching me.

"So… What now?" It was the fire boy again. He looked tired and his shaggy dark brown hair was drenched from the rain, but his green eyes were still full of energy.

"I don't know," Robin said, shaking his head. "This was definitely _not_ supposed to happen. I… guess we should probably get out of town. They'll be looking for who did this."

A tall, older guy with blond hair and a prosthetic leg raised a hand. "Well, I've got a house in Hearthome City. We could go there until we decide what to do next."

I didn't know how to feel about that. I didn't really want to leave Veilstone, but… I guessed things weren't going to go back to normal anytime soon.

In the end, we were just seven drenched kids parting from the crowd, walking down the road towards Route 215…

* * *

**Yeah. This was originally going to be a 'meet & greet' chapter, but I decided that would be boring. What do you think of this instead? You still meet a few characters, but with more fighting and explosions and less sitting in a mall.**

**As always, thanks for reading!**


	6. Chapter 3: Robin

**Half of this chapter really takes place during Chapter 3. Specifically, the entire second section of the story is a flashback, but I didn't put it italics because I've found that doing that makes it harder to read. **

* * *

How had this day gone so wrong so quickly?

It was just supposed to be a meeting, but _no_… it just _had_ to have turned into a battle to the death on the top floor of the mall.

That morning was all I could think about as we walked through the rain towards Levi's house in Hearthome City.

* * *

When I had gotten to the mall, almost everyone was already there. I guess I'd misjudged the distance from Canalave to Veilstone, because I ended up being a little bit late.

The five that were already there saw me the moment I walked in, and we all sat down at a table. The last one to arrive was Levi, who came about five minutes after me.

With everyone there, we were just sitting around, making introductions and all that. No one knew how to even begin talking about trying to stop nature from going nuts.

As it turned out, we didn't have to.

My chair was facing away from the door, so I didn't see them at first. But the red-headed flying type girl – what was her name, Mikoto? Anyways, she pointed out a couple of people that had walked in a while ago. A blond girl and a black haired boy.

"That girl's been looking at us ever since they walked in," she said. "Do you know her? Are they Guardians too?"

I'd never seen either of them before. At least I didn't think I had. "I don't think so…" I said. But the way they were looking at us _was_ kind of strange. Especially because when they saw us looking back at them, the black haired guy immediately looked away and the blond girl just smiled at us and gave a small wave.

After that, they seemed to pay less attention to us. So, after some extreme rationalization in my head, I thought that it might have been our group that was acting weird and they were just wondering what we were talking about.

After all, we were at a table that was off to the side, talking quietly, and a few of us were constantly looking around. All in all, it wouldn't have surprised me if people thought we were acting suspicious.

I thought I was just being paranoid. Maybe they were just a couple on a date or something, and we were just acting like total weirdos.

And then… the girl walked over to our table. She certainly didn't look like she was approaching a bunch of strangers. She looked as confident as someone who was chatting with her friends.

"Hi!" she said. After a few seconds of being stared at in silence, she tried again. "Hello?"

And then they all looked at me. I guess I was really the only person that all of them knew, even if I had only talked to them for the first time the day before. So apparently that meant that I was the one that had to talk to the weird girl.

"Um… Hello?"

"Hi. I'm Kelly."

…Can you really blame me for being confused? I mean, I was talking to people that basically have superpowers trying to fix nature from destroying itself, and then this girl I've never met before comes out of nowhere and introduces herself. What was I supposed to say?

"I'm Ro-"

"Robin Archer, I know."

"…Wait, wha-"

"Look, I'll just get to the point." She glanced over at the boy she had come in with. He made a gesture that clearly meant _get on with it already_. She looked back at us and started addressing the entire table instead of just me. "I know who you are and I know _what_ you are. I'll give you one chance."

Elliot, the youngest one there, spoke up. "To do what?"

"Leave. Just… go home. Forget about all of this. Before something bad happens to you."

"Wait…" Evelyn held up a hand. "Who are you and why on earth should we leave right now? How would you know about us, anyway?"

"I can't help but notice that you're not leaving," Kelly said.

Evelyn rolled her eyes. "Answer my questions and maybe we will."

She sighed. "The first one's easy, I already answered it. My name is Kelly, and that's all you need to know about me right now. As for why you should leave… just trust me on that one. Bad things will happen if you guys are together in one place. And they will happen very, very soon. And I know about all of you the same way you do." She looked directly at me. "_Someone_ needs to be more careful about what they say on the phone."

"But…" I was pretty sure I hadn't called anyone named Kelly. "How would you know what I said?"

"Easy. The phone company stores conversations in a database. But, you know, it's supposed to be completely inaccessible unless something's being used as evidence in a trial or something, though. Privacy laws and all that crap. They really need to get a better security system, though. It only took me, like, ten minutes to get through."

Crap. I thought about all the information we exchanged over the phone. Including the fact that we would be meeting here at noon today.

But who was this girl? And why did she want us to leave?

"W-"

She interrupted me. Again. "Enough questions, already! Are you going to leave or not?"

I certainly didn't want to leave now; we needed to figure out a way to fix things. I could only hope that the others felt the same way.

"No." I stood up, face to face with the girl. She had to be a couple years younger than me, but she was almost as tall as I was.

Evelyn stood behind me, and the rest of them followed suit. "We're not going to leave," she said.

Kelly sighed and shook her head. "Not a smart choice." She looked back to where her friend was still standing and waved for him to come over. "Dominic!" she called.

Instead of coming over, the guy, apparently Dominic, put a hand to his mouth and whistled. Loudly. Every head in the room, including the people at our table, turned to face him.

Which wasn't really a good thing, considering a second later the sounds of pokeballs being opened came from behind us, in the back of the room. People started screaming as they scrambled to get out of the way of the pokémon that appeared.

At that point, I was pretty glad I had been paranoid enough to bring my own pokémon. It looked like the others had, too. I sent out my Bisharp, which I was pretty sure was the only one I had at the moment that wouldn't immediately crash through the floor. Aggron and Metagross weren't exactly known for being as light as a feather, after all. All around me, the other Guardians were sending out their own pokémon.

The room had cleared out pretty quickly. All that were left were my group, the two other people, and about four others.

The girl that had first talked to us was still in the same place. The Jolteon that she had released now stood protectively by her feet, its fur sparking.

"I gave you a chance. You made the wrong choice." Kelly tilted her head slightly, turning to look back at us. "Count yourself lucky that our leader's not here." She was silent for a moment. "Evelyn Myers and Mikoto Kazehana. Water and flying, right? I have a little present for you."

She raised a hand towards the ceiling, not even flinching at the sound of an explosion from colliding attacks coming from behind her. I wasn't really sure what exactly happened next, but a chunk of the roof suddenly disappeared in an even bigger and louder explosion.

Whatever it was continued through the roof and completely vaporized the area where the table was, blasting us all backwards and leaving a gaping hole in the floor. The hair on the back of my neck was standing up.

Lightning.

Aside from being thrown straight into a wall from the shockwave, I didn't think it had really hurt me too badly. Looking around, though, I saw that Levi had barely been affected at all and Mikoto and Evelyn looked like they were in a lot more pain than the rest of us. I guessed type effectiveness applied to more than just pokémon.

I would've checked to see if they were okay if I hadn't had to dodge an Ariados that came flying towards me using Giga Impact. Ugh. Words cannot describe how much I hate spiders.

I barely made it out of the way in time. That thing barreled right past me and made a huge dent in the wall.

"HolycrapBisharpuseAerialAce!" It pretty much came out as a single word, but thankfully, my Bisharp understood me and slashed the crap out of it.

Great. One down, twenty to go.

Then the lights flickered out. Oh boy.

"Bisharp, uhh…"I tried to think of something as I ducked under a flying chair." Just, um, attack anything that's not on our sid - whoa!" Talking while dodging flying plants, fire, and shadow balls was pretty distracting, so I shut up after that and concentrated on attacking.

After Kelly's weird flash of light eliminated the pokémon from the battle, I had to take a much more 'hands-on' approach. And while I normally try to refrain from punching people, I'd say it's pretty reasonable to make an exception when they're trying to kill me.

The sirens stopped everyone a few minutes later. The others had left so quickly… it bothered me. It made me feel like that fight was just the beginning. The beginning of something a lot bigger.

* * *

Now that I think about it, the entire fight had probably lasted less than fifteen minutes.

It felt like it had been a lot longer than that.

My heart was still pounding. At least the storm wasn't as intense as it was before. It made it a little easier to walk around in it, but it was starting to get cold.

And then there was that random new kid who came out of nowhere. Mica claimed that he was on our side, though, so I guessed I'd just have to trust her judgment on that one. It's kind of sad when you can tell someone's on your side just because they don't try to kill you.

The new kid introduced himself as Ian Hale, Guardian of Fighting. No one had really said anything after that. I guess we were all kind of shocked.

There were seven in our group now. And, if I wasn't mistaken, I think there were six in the other one. No, wait… '_Count yourself lucky that our leader's not here.' _They had seven too; one of them just wasn't there. So, fourteen in total. I wondered who the last three were.

It was Mica who finally broke the silence. Out of all seven of us, she was the only one who didn't look the least bit cold. "What should we do? Call the police?"

Elliot laughed humorlessly. "Yeah, 'cause they did such a good job stopping them earlier. They'd probably just arrest us for running from a crime scene." He seemed like he was in a bad mood, but I couldn't really blame him. Being the Guardian of Fire, he probably was having a worse time with the rain than the rest of us were.

"Hey, Levi?" Evelyn asked. "How much farther is it?"

"Hm? Oh, maybe five minutes. Not too far."

I could see Hearthome City through the diminishing rain. I'd been there before. It was a pretty nice city.

"My place is over there," Levi said, pointing to an average sized house. "It'll be nice to finally get out of this rain."

"You can say that again," Elliot said.

And, while I was fully expecting someone to repeat what Levi said, no one did. None of us were really in a joking mood. We walked the rest of the way in silence.

* * *

"So, uh… yeah." Levi said after he let us in. "I think there's some pizza in the freezer if you want some."

And so, ten minutes later, we were all talking and eating pizza.

"So. Anyone know what we're supposed to do about this?" I asked.

It was quiet for a second, then Mica answered, "About what? Fixing nature or the lunatics that tried to kill us?"

"Either, really."

"Well," Evelyn said, "the other Guardians only died about ten years ago. There's got to be someone that knew them. Maybe they can help?"

"Hey, everyone shut up for a second." Levi said. "I want to check something." He grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.

"-rlier, people had reported sounds of explosions coming from the top of the Veilstone Department Store." It was a news report about the mall. "No one is sure of what really happened, as a power outage resulted in the security cameras being taken out. As the police arrived, a group of teenagers were seen running from the building, long after the rest had evacuated. Eyewitnesses claim that, when the police tried to stop them, they-"

"Annihilated them," I mumbled, thinking back to the destruction I'd seen at the entrance.

"Shh."

"-No one knows who these people are," behind the reporter, a grainy shot (probably taken with a cell phone) appeared, showing the other group, "but most believe that they're the cause of the explosions. Some go as far as to say that they are the Guar-"

Levi turned it off.

"Hey! I was watching that." Elliot said. I was pretty sure he was joking.

"I don't want to hear all their crap about how the Guardians are evil now. I just wanted to make sure no one saw us." Levi said. "That would've been bad."

"Well, they are, aren't they?" I said.

"Who's what?"

"The other Guardians. Evil."

"We don't know that for sure."

"They just tried to kill us for no reason. I think that counts as evil, right?"

"That Kelly girl did say that bad things would happen if we didn't leave, tho-"

"Are you two really just going to sit there and argue about something that pointless?" Evelyn interrupted. "We should at least be making plans. We could retaliate. Or something."

"Yeah." Ian said. "But we don't know anything about them."

"We know about Kelly and Dominic. I could try searching the trainer database for their names." I said. "Levi, can I use your computer?"

"Wait, how do you know their names?" Ian asked.

"They, uh… it was before you got there." Mica said.

As it turned out, there were only five matches for the name Kelly and three for Dominic. We narrowed it down by the pictures.

"Kelly Rhodes and Dominic Campbell." I read off the screen. "They're from different cities. Different regions, actually. They don't really have anything in common."

"Other than being Guardians." Elliot said.

"Yeah. The others are probably as different from each other as they are." I said. "I wonder how they formed that group. Guardians don't look any different from regular people."

"Ugh." Levi said. "Neither of them are even from Sinnoh. That tells us nothing."

"It tells us that they came to Sinnoh." Evelyn said. "There has to be a reason for that."

"That still doesn't mean much, though." Mikoto chimed in. "I used to live in Jhoto. I think I'm still registered as a Jhoto trainer, too."

"And I'm from Hoenn." Elliot added.

"Well, we're back to square one, then." I said.

We all discussed it for a while, but we really didn't have enough information to make any solid conclusions about Kelly and Dominic. All we could make were vague guesses.

"So what about fixing things? Anyone have any ideas for that?" I asked.

"I don't think I've ever been able to control weather very well," Evelyn said, "and I have no idea how to stop the flooding. But like I said earlier, maybe we could try to find someone that used to know a Guardian."

I knew who most of the last Guardians were. It was pretty easy to find information about them on the internet. Since I was still on the computer anyway, I looked it up and scanned the list. None of them had lived in Hearthome.

"Ooh, look, the Guardian of Flying was in Jubilife!" Mikoto said, pointing at the screen over my shoulder. "That's pretty close, isn't it?"

"If by close, you mean three hours away. But still," Ian said as he read the list, "the only other Guardian in Sinnoh were the Guardians of Dark and Poison. They lived in Eterna and the Battle Zone, and those are even farther."

"Might as well go to Jubilife, then." I said.

It was starting to get late by the time we were done talking.

"Well, you guys can stay here if you want to." Levi said, yawning. "If you don't mind sleeping on the floor. Someone can take the couch. Good night."

Elliot was the first to claim the couch, but the floor wasn't really that bad when you're as exhausted as I was. I fell asleep pretty quickly. It was nice to have a break where I didn't have to deal with reality.

* * *

I woke up in the middle of the night.

I'd had some kind of weird dream. I kept my eyes closed I tried to remember what it was.

It was one of those dreams that was weird because it wasn't. Weird because it seemed almost real.

I think… I was sitting at a table. In a park. I was… talking to someone? We were playing some kind of board game. A strategy game. Chess.

I don't remember who I was playing against, though. I don't think it was anyone I knew. But I remember their voice.

They did something at the very end of the dream, right before I woke up. They waved their hand over the chess board. They had a silver thing on their wrist. It was a watch or a bracelet or something.

I remember that they said something as they did that.

_Your move, Robin._

* * *

**I like to screw with people's dreams. It's fun. Especially when it's actually relevant to the plot but the character can't remember what happened in it.**

**Next time, we'll probably get to see our main group go to Jubilife and try to find someone that knew the Guardian of Flying. **

**And I might as well say it now. I think there are too many characters in this story.**

**Soon, people shall die.**

**As always, thanks for reading!**


	7. Chapter 4: Evelyn

**So. **

**It's been a while. **

**I don't have much of an explanation. My computer crashed like eight months ago and I lost the part of this chapter that I wrote, and I guess I just lost interest for a while. But I think I might pick this back up again.**

**Without any further ado...**

* * *

Was it really just yesterday that my life was actually normal?

(The answer, unfortunately, is no. My life apparently was destined to be screwed up, starting ten years ago.)

I had a hard time sleeping on the floor, but I eventually managed to fall asleep. I was the first one up, which annoyed me. It was like having a sleepover at a friend's house and getting up before them and having nothing to do but awkwardly stand around until they wake up. Except I'd never been in this house before and was kind of scared I would break something. Or step on someone.

I wanted to call my parents.

I had left yesterday with the intention of going back home by six. My parents were a bit overprotective in the first place, so I'd decided to only tell them that I was going to hang out with some "friends" at the mall in Veilstone. Meanwhile, the mall exploded and I haven't been back or even called to let them know I was okay. They must be worried sick.

Robin had warned us against using the phones. He thought that Kelly might be able to figure out where we were by tracking the signal through some crazy hacking or whatever the hell she did to find out we were meeting in the first place. I remember that yesterday she had said that she'd only listened to our conversations, but Robin insisted that we should be cautious.

We were planning to head out to Jubilife around nine, but it was only seven thirty. I got on the computer.

I resisted the temptation to use the phone, and read a couple news articles about yesterday's incident. There was a lot of damage (big surprise), so the mall was going to be closed for a while. I didn't really care; I'd never shopped there anyways. There were also a few people that got injured, but more as a result of getting trampled in the panicking crowd than from our battle. Thankfully, there were no casualties. I already felt guilty enough about the whole thing, so I definitely didn't need something like that on my conscience.

At that point, I glanced around. It was about seven forty-five, and everyone was still asleep. Someone in the next room was snoring really loudly, and Elliot looked about two centimeters away from falling off the couch.

I decided to look up the previous Guardian of Flying, since I didn't really know much about him.

His name had been Daniel Traille. He had been born in Goldenrod City and moved to Jubilife when he was twenty. The guy liked to fly around the city like a superhero. He met the woman that later became his wife by talking her out of jumping off a building (she was who we were going to try to find once we got to Jubilife). He died when he was thirty-four, found choked to death on top of the tallest building in the city. Ouch. There was no trace of whoever had done it. He was the fourth Guardian to be killed.

"You're doing your research, huh?"

I flinched. Mikoto was standing right behind me, reading over my shoulder.

"Daniel was so cool," she continued excitedly. "Did you know that once, that one TV station in Jubilife caught on fire, and he totally saved the day! So there was some kind of electrical short that started it but it got completely out of control, and…" She launched into a story about how he had heroically led a bunch of water/flying type pokémon to battle the inferno. She was so enthusiastic about the whole thing, I couldn't help but smile. It was hard to believe she was talking about a dead guy.

The rest of our ragtag little group was woken up by her story. At some point Levi made coffee, which was great after a crappy night on the floor.

"You know…" Levi said, "I can't help but wonder if we all should go."

"Why?" Elliot asked. "Wouldn't it be safer?"

"Not really. I think we'd be more recognizable as a group. Those other people might find us. Or someone might think that we were the ones who burned down the mall yesterday."

"Technically, we _did_ burn down the mall yesterday." I said.

"We were provoked."

Ian seemed to think that was incredibly funny and burst out laughing. His laugh was infectious, and soon we all were too.

It was decided that Robin, Mikoto, Elliot, and I would go to Jubilife while Mica, Ian, and Levi would stay here and "hold down the fort," as Ian put it. We left at nine.

As Ian had estimated yesterday, it took an uneventful three hours to reach Jubilife City. I'd never been there before, and the place was absolutely enormous. The skyscrapers there were even huger than the ones in Veilstone, and they were so shiny that it almost hurt to look at them in the midday sun. The sidewalks were full of people, probably on their lunch break. I think I'd have a hard time navigating through it even if I knew where I was going.

"How are we supposed to find anyone in this city?" I asked.

"There was this one website that said Daniel some kind of spirograph symbol painted on the top of the building he lived in." Elliot said.

It was well known that spirographs were sometimes used as the 'symbol' of the Guardians, so I guess it wasn't that surprising. He probably had it put there so he didn't accidentally land on the wrong building when he was too lazy to use the front door.

"Cool! I'm going to go look for it!" Mikoto said, and prepared to jump into the air.

"Wait!" Robin put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her.

"What?"

"We're supposed to be acting like normal people right now. Normal people can't fly. Don't you think that flying up in the middle of a crowded city might be a little bit suspicious?"

"I… oh. Right." She looked disappointed. "Maybe I could have one of my pokémon do it instead?"

Our pokeballs had started working again that morning, as Ian had found out by accidentally releasing his Gallade in the middle of Levi's living room. As far as I could tell, that electric blast had screwed them up for maybe twelve hours at the most. I had been worried that the damage was permanent.

"Yeah, that sounds good," Robin said. "Just let it out where there are less people."

We went out to a park area near the edge of the city so Mikoto could let out her Pidgeot. As a bonus, there was also a really awesome hamburger place nearby where we ate lunch.

She rode her Pidgeot up into the sky (it was nearly five feet tall and could easily carry the weight of a person) and told us that she'd meet us back at the park when she found the right building.

The three of us that were left decided that it might be nice to just take a break in the park. There was a slight breeze and bird pokémon were chirping in the trees. It'd been ages since I'd experienced weather this nice.

We ended up talking about how we ended up here what we were able to do.

Elliot said that he'd figured out he was a Guardian when he accidentally set his house on fire and then proceeded to not die in it. ("I still almost died from oxygen deprivation, but the fire itself didn't hurt me.") He talked about how making fire from nothing made him feel really cold and dizzy, ("I guess the heat's got to come from somewhere, right?"), but manipulating flames from something that was already on fire was a lot easier. It turned out that he actually lived in Jubilife, but was in the middle of one of those trainer journey things that people go on all the time when the whole Guardian thing started ("This is way more interesting, anyway.")

When it was my turn to share stories, I told them about how I'd had the great idea of going swimming in the ocean in the middle of a thunderstorm back when I'd been thirteen and pretty much got electrocuted by lightning. ("I passed out, woke up fifty feet below the surface, and thought I was dead. It took me a while to figure out what direction was up.") I was lucky it'd been raining yesterday, because I could really only mess with water that was already in the vicinity. ("Water's not that great for a real fight, anyway. Mostly for knockback value.") I talked about how I didn't leave Sunyshore often. My parents' paranoia had rubbed off on me a little. ("And for a good reason, I guess.")

Robin told a story that I only half believed about singlehandedly stopping a Steelix from eating a bunch of tourists with a giant chunk of metal when he was eleven. ("I had a bit of a hero complex at the time. It worked out in my favor, though.") He was just talking about how he'd helped his dad run the ferry in Canalave City when he stopped midsentence.

"Is something wrong?" Elliot asked, after a short silence.

"Shh." Robin held up a hand. "Don't you hear that?"

I listened, but I didn't hear anything strange. In fact… I didn't hear anything. The birds weren't making noise anymore. There was no wind whatsoever. I stood up and looked around.

There was a slight rustle in the tall grass behind us.

_Tall grass. Shit._

All of a sudden, a group of at least ten Shinx and Luxio jumped out at us. They just _had_ to be electric, didn't they.

I froze long enough for their appearance to be completely overshadowed by Robin sending out his freaking gigantic Metagross and telling it to use Psychic. The offending pokémon were blasted at least twenty feet backwards by the attack.

They didn't come back.

"What the hell was that about?" Robin asked as he recalled his pokémon.

"…Probably just one of those random attacks?" Elliot guessed. "Wow. That must suck for people that don't have pokemon. By the way, Robin, your Metagross is awesome."

"Thanks."

When Mikoto finally decided to show up about ten minutes later (completely showing off by backflipping off of her Pidgeot, I might add), she told us where the building was.

"It's over near the other side of the city, on 3rd street. The symbol on the roof was really faded. I think I passed over it at least three times before I noticed it. There was actually one on a balcony, too. Fifteenth floor."

* * *

"So, how'd you figure out you were a Guardian?" I asked Mikoto as we walked towards 3rd street. I felt obligated to since she'd missed share-your-life-story-time in the park earlier.

"I used to sleepwalk a lot," she said, "and you know how sometimes you get those dreams where you can fly? Yeah... I slept-flew – uh, sleep-flyed – anyways, I crashed into the ceiling."

When we got to the building and went up to the apartment that Mikoto claimed was the right one, I still felt a bit unsure about the whole thing.

"So you're _sure_ this is the right one?" I asked for what had to be the seventh time. "What if she moved or something?"

"Stop worrying so much," Mikoto said. "We still have to try, no matter what."

With that, she walked right up to the door and knocked.

"I'll be there in a second!" a voice called from within. The door opened a moment later. Behind it was a tall, brunette woman who looked to be in her forties. She blinked a few times, obviously not expecting to see four teenagers outside her apartment. "Uh… Hello."

"Hi! Are you Mrs. Traille?" Mikoto asked.

"Yes, I am."

"Do you think you can help us?"

"With what?"

"I- Well-" Mikoto hesitated. I could see that past this point, she didn't seem to have thought this through.

"You know about the Guardians, right?" Robin said.

I facepalmed. "I'm pretty sure she knows about the Guardians, Robin. She was married to one."

"Is this about Daniel?" Mrs. Traille asked.

She'd looked very uncomfortable throughout our entire train wreck of an attempt to explain ourselves, and I was quite honestly surprised that she hadn't slammed the door in our faces by that point.

"No- well, kind of, but we…" Mikoto tried to say.

"We're Guardians," Elliot blurted out.

Mrs. Traille stared at us. "You're serious?" She asked, after a moment.

We nodded.

"Well," she said, stepping back and holding the door open for us, "you'd better come in, then."

* * *

"I do remember asking him what his powers were like a few times," she explained after we had told her the story of what had happened the past couple days and asked for her help. We were all sitting in Mrs. Traille's living room. "He said that they were difficult to understand how to use, but once he got it, it just sort of clicked."

"Any idea _how_, though?" Mikoto asked. She was swinging her legs back and forth from her seat on the couch. Before then, I hadn't really noticed how short she was, but she was, like, really short. "I can do stuff with the wind and I can fly and most flying-types will listen to me, but I have no idea how to do the whole balance-keeping thing with the weather."

"Hmm…" Mrs. Traille gave a small smile as if remembering a fond memory. "Well, as Daniel so eloquently put it, you need a 'self-induced mindfuck' to get it. But after that, like he said, it just clicks. Like riding a bike, you'll never forget it."

"And how, exactly," Elliot said in a mock sophisticated tone, "does one self-induce a mindfuck?"

Mrs. Traille shrugged. "I don't know. I'd guess that for things having to do with the mind, you'd have to ask the Guardian of Psychic. Actually, I think that Daniel said that Sara Williams – you know, the old Guardian of Psychic – helped him with the whole figuring it out process."

"Oh. Hm." Robin said.

"Is something wrong?"

"No, it's just that…" He trailed off.

"We don't know who it is." Elliot finished.

"I don't think there were any psychic-types at that fight yesterday, so they're probably not part of that other group." I said.

"No, wait. There was a Claydol." Mikoto said.

"That was Levi's."

"Well!" Mrs. Traille said, raising her voice slightly to get our attention. "Is there anything else I can help you with? I hate to cut this short, but I really need to be going; I have an appointment in fifteen minutes."

No, that's it," Robin said, after thinking for a moment. "Thanks, Mrs. Traille. We really appreciate everything you've told us."

"It's no problem," She said, smiling. "If there's anything else I can help you with, you know where to find me."

* * *

It was a long walk back to Levi's house. I was a bit jealous of Mikoto, who had decided that she'd rather fly than walk back. She left us in the dust.

We passed through Oreburgh city on the way. I made a mental note of the Gym there. I'd never considered taking the whole trainer challenge before, but now that I was actually out seeing more of Sinnoh, it didn't seem like such a bad idea. I might try it once things settled down. _If_ they settled down.

It didn't look like it was open today, though. There was a girl a few years younger than me, obviously a trainer, that was peering through the glass doors into the darkened interior. I'd heard that gyms like that used to be open all the time, but now that there were a lot fewer challengers they were only open a day or two a week. And you had to make an appointment or something. I honestly wasn't really sure; I'd never been too clear on the whole concept.

She caught sight of us as she turned away. For a moment, she looked like she was considering challenging one of us to a battle, but seemed to decide against it and headed off deeper in the city.

Elliot saw that I was looking in that direction and started recounting how he'd challenged that gym a year or so ago. We all laughed at how he self-deprecatingly told the story of how he'd failed 'like, at least twenty times' because he refused to use anything but fire types in a rock gym.

Since we were on the subject, Robin also talked about his attempt at the gym challenge. He'd cleared the first five, though not without some considerable difficulty with Veilstone's Fighting Gym, but took a break (which he's still currently on) after losing five times in a row in the Canalave Gym.

I didn't have many great stories to share, but I was content to listen to them. It made the time pass more quickly. We all continued swapping stories, and got back faster than I expected.

Levi answered the door when we arrived. I could hear the sound of a video game accompanied by Ian and Mica shouting at each other in a different room.

"Hey, guys," Levi said. "How'd it go?"

"It went… remarkably well," I said, shrugging.

"Well, what were you expecting?" Elliot said. "Not everything we do has to end with everything exploding."

I half expected everything to start exploding right then and there at the mere mention of everything not exploding, but they didn't.

"Apparently," Robin said, "the Guardian of Psychic would supposedly be able to help us with this kind of stuff. Assuming they know how to do it in the first place. And assuming we can find them and they're not a complete raving lunatic like the others."

"Great…" Levi said. "So where's Mikoto?"

"She's too good for walking, so she went ahead of us," I said. "Isn't she here?"

"No."

"She. Was. Flying." Elliot said exasperatedly. "How could we have possibly gotten here before her?"

"Well that's just perfect." Levi said before turning and walking towards his computer.

"What're you doing?" Robin asked. "We really shouldn't use phones."

"I'm not calling her," Levi said, "she left her phone here anyway. I'm just checking to make sure there weren't any random tornadoes or hurricanes or anything in the past few hours."

Everyone was quiet for a few minutes, minus Ian and Mica playing their game in the other room.

"Find anything?" I asked.

Levi was practically punching the F5 button. "Not yet, because the stupid page won't load, because this computer's a goddamn piece of…" The page, which was a website for a weather/news channel, loaded. "…shit. Shit."

"It's a piece of shit shit?" Elliot asked.

Ignoring him, Levi angrily summarized the contents of the page. "Not only was there actually a fucking tornado on Route 206 two hours ago…"

Route 206, I remembered, ran between Oreburgh and Eterna City. We hadn't gone through it ourselves, but I think Mikoto might've passed over it if she was flying straight from Jubilife to Hearthome.

He continued, his voice rising in volume, "…but some dude there said he saw something fall out of the fucking sky. Said he thought it was probably a bird pokémon that got hit by flying debris or something. So, since the goddamn tornado lasted all of maybe ten minutes, the dude decided to go see what the thing was, and guess what? Sure as hell not a thing. And not a pokémon, either." He was practically yelling at that point. Ian and Mica had stopped their game and had come over to see what was going on.

Levi violently scooted his chair back to let us see the screen in a manner that I think was supposed to be dramatic or at least in line with his increasing volume, but was somewhat ruined by his almost falling over when one of the chair legs caught on the carpet.

Of course, being able to see the picture on the screen completely erased any hint of humor I would have been remotely capable of feeling at that point. All humor was replaced with the complete and absolute certainty that I was going to puke.

I've never really liked the sight of blood.

* * *

**As you can see, I finally got around to killing someone.**

**If anyone remembers that survey I had on my profile, I did look at it. There was a three-way tie between Dominic, Eric, and Kyra. I just picked Dominic, since he was the most convenient, and the next chapter's going to be a short feature about him!**

**I reset the poll if anyone wants to vote for the next mini-feature.**


	8. Chapter 5: Dominic

**Dominic Campbell: Guardian of Normal**

* * *

Blackthorn City was never much of a place for normal types to begin with. There, it's just dragons, dragons, dragons, all day long. And if it's not a dragon type, then it's weak. Boring. Useless.

Honestly, I used to think the same.

I grew up there, the youngest of six siblings. My three older sisters just ignored me for the most part, and my two older brothers, predictably, were grade-A assholes.

I guess it started with a shift in preference. I didn't really like dragon types anymore. Maybe normal types were cooler. They had a wider strategic range, and didn't rely on raw power like dragon types did.

My siblings pretty much thought I was an idiot from that point on. Alex, the oldest, got me a Skitty for my twelfth birthday just to mock me.

In retaliation, I trained her until she was able to defeat his Dragonair. It took a while, but I think the look on his face was worth every second of it.

For a while, nothing at all pointed to my being the Guardian of Normal besides that. No awesome powers, nothing.

Noting except… I did also get kind of violent around that same time. I don't know, I just got mad easily. My parents had to hide the kitchen knives. And power tools. And staplers.

I was diagnosed with at least seven different psychological disorders.

It all boiled down to having too much pent-up energy. According to everyone, I needed a hobby. I picked up a few, like pokémon training, running, and climbing, among other things. I was never very good at climbing. I took a few bad falls off cliffs. Once time I could've sworn I broke my arm, but strangely enough, it was fine an hour later.

I cycled through different hobbies and activities faster like crazy, but only a couple really stuck.

It went on like that for a few more years. Everyone was always telling me what I should do and what I should like and why I was weird and boring and useless. I finally decided that I was fed up with Blackthorn City and their damn dragons. I left.

Time passed. Things happened.

I could do more than I could before. When I focused, I could kick doors down with practically no effort. I could take a punch to the face without flinching. I could hit a bug with a rock thrown from fifty feet away. Nothing that I would've considered particularly impressive back when I was a stupid kid idolizing dragons, but I knew better now.

More time passed. More things happened.

I happened to meet someone who didn't think that I was the biggest useless piece of crap excuse for a person (and a Guardian, for that matter) that they'd even seen. I got an all-expenses-paid trip to Sinnoh. And a new hobby.

Things got interesting after that.

Theoretically, yesterday's best outcome would have been for those idiots to just leave the mall and not look back. We weren't supposed to kill any of them even if they refused, but a battle was not out of the question. Nor was a full-tackle pokémon battle royale.

That was a fun fight, even if the police came and cut it short. Come to think of it, the fight with the police was pretty awesome too. They were a lot easier to beat, at the very least. I managed to grab one of their guns. I thought shooting might make a nice new hobby.

Eric, the self-proclaimed second in command ghost dude, actually agreed with me for once. Especially since the whole ban on killing is no longer in effect.

What happened today? It was really just a coincidence, seeing that little bird returning to her nest. I was out on a run; running being one of the few things that I've managed to stick with over the years.

I was going south down Route 206. It was completely deserted, which was weird. I would've thought that at least some people would've been there. I figured it'd be as good a time as any to get in a little target practice.

Despite what some people (cough Eric cough) may say about me, I am not the kind of asshole who would try to shoot a pokémon for no reason. Most of them ran off after the first shot, anyway. I was only aiming for tree trunks, fence posts, that kind of thing.

However, the kind of focus I need to hold any hint of accuracy got screwed up a while later by the wind picking up dramatically. I looked around to see what the hell had the nerve to interrupt me like that. I probably wouldn't have even seen her otherwise.

I thought she actually was a bird, at first. But birds don't stop and levitate in midair to try to see what was making the gunshot noises a thousand feet below them.

I'm not sure if she saw me or not, but once I knew that she was neither a bird pokémon nor riding one like she should've been if she'd had half a brain, I sure as hell wasn't going to give up an opportunity like this.

Two birds with one stone – We'd have one less Guardian to deal with, plus this would be great target practice.

I rushed too much and screwed up my first shot. Way too low and too far left.

_The wind must be different up there. And gravity is also a thing. Have to take gravity into account, right. Oh, great. She's moving now. People usually move when they get shot at so that's not all that surprising but-_

_Focus. _

Being the Guardian of Normal, I can't do anything flashy.

_Ready._

But, like most normal types, I don't need to put on a big show to accomplish something.

_Aim._

And sometimes it's the things you can't see that really count.

_Fire._

* * *

There was a reason we weren't supposed to kill anyone in the mall yesterday: When inexperienced Guardians die an unnatural death, shit happens.

The "shit," in this case, was a gigantic freaking tornado. And while I would normally be the one to laugh in the face of severe weather, I was pretty sure that now would not be the right time to do that. I've seen tornadoes before. This was not a normal tornado. This would probably kill me.

The redheaded flying girl had plummeted into the trees somewhere to the right of the path. I made a mental note of the location before running like hell away from the whirlwind that was tearing up the entire route. The sheer power of it was tearing the trees and fences that I'd been using as targets earlier straight out of the ground and into the air.

Meanwhile, I focused on moving in exactly one direction: away. I kind of wished that I had anticipated that something like this would have happened and sought shelter _before_ shooting a Guardian but noooo.

Maybe a minute or two later (which felt like six and a half weeks) I came across a large, rather convenient boulder that I could hide behind and hopefully wait out the tornado. While it was large, it wasn't expanding or moving or anything, so I was pretty sure I'd be safe there.

Earlier, while shielding my head from a rather large branch that seemed determined to assault me, I think I might have broken a few bones in my right hand. I wasn't too worried about it. It hurt like hell, of course, but I knew from experience that it'd be fine in about half an hour or so.

While destructive, the stupid windy death trap only maintained itself for about ten or fifteen minutes before finally dissipating.

I made my way back to the part of the path that was near where she'd fallen, having to stop several times to maneuver around fallen trees and clumps of debris. Once I got off the path, it was surprisingly easier. Most of the branches had caught on the trees that were left standing, leaving the ground relatively clear.

I usually have a pretty good sense of direction, so it wasn't much of a problem to find...

_Oh, gross._ I supposed she would've been pretty before she took her gravity-fueled plunge into a tree, but ew.

There was definitely no mistaking that she was dead. She looked like she might've been impaled by tree branches on the way down, and I doubt it'd be possible for someone to have so much blood in a location that is not their body and still stay alive. That and I think her neck might've been broken. And all of those things happened after I shot her, anyway. It was a good thing I'd aimed for the chest and not the head. The way it was now would probably be mistaken for a branch impalement.

Hmm… What had her name been? Kelly would've known. She had a thing about remembering names that I definitely didn't. In fact, Kelly probably would've been able to recite what's-her-face's full name, every city she's ever lived in, and a whole crapload of other useless information that she always seems to know.

Eh, whatever. Time to call the police.

Eric, despite being a stupid know-it-all showoffy jerkface, gave me some good advice once. Something about calling the police yourself when you actually have a good excuse for a dead body.

This was in a different police district than Veilstone anyway, so I doubt they'd recognize me. I'd just tell them I saw her fall off a bird when the tornado hit or something.

I grabbed my cell phone – _ow wrong hand_ – and paused for a moment to get in the right frame of mind.

_Okay. So you were just out on a walk and then in the distance, you saw a tornado form out of nowhere. You saw something fall out of the sky. Once the tornado was gone, you went to see what it was. And now you're a very freaked-out guy staring at the corpse of a teenage girl._ Yeah, sounds believable enough. I dialed the number.

"_911, what is your emergency?"_

"Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shi-"

"_Sir? Please calm down. What is your emergency?"_

"I- I don't know. I mean- There was a tornado, and there- I saw something fall out of the sky, and-"

"_Where are you? Are you hurt?"_

"No, I'm fine, and it's gone now, but- uh, Route 206, near Route 207 I guess? Somewhere, like- to the right of the path, in the trees, I think. After it was gone- I went to see what fell, and- shit, I think she's dead."

"_She?"_

"Yeah there's blood everywhere and I think her neck might be broken and-"

"_Can you check for a pulse? Is she breathing?"_

"What? Oh." I paused, doing nothing for a few seconds besides shifting the phone to make it sound like I was doing something. "I don't feel anything, no. She's not breathing, either."

"_How old do you think she is?"_

Hm. Good question. "Fifteen?" I guessed. "Maybe sixteen?"

"_Okay, there's help on the way. Can you go back to the main path so they'll know where to look?"_

"Yeah, I will."

"_Do you want me to stay on the line?"_

"No, I think I'll be fine. Thanks." I hung up.

As per the operator lady's instructions, I went back to the path and waited for ten very long, boring minutes before remembering that I was still in possession of a gun and that, as fun and useful as it was, it would be in my best interest to get rid of it.

I chucked it (with my right hand, which was feeling much better now) as far as I could into the trees on the other side of the path.

My phone rang. Leave it to Kelly to eavesdrop on my calls just so she can mock me. We may be friends, but she has a funny way of showing it. I don't know how the hell she does her weird hacking shit (I asked her once and she spouted a bunch of technical gibberish that I'm pretty sure she made up), but I know that she tracks the activity of certain phones, including mine. God, you could not separate that girl from her laptop with a crowbar.

"_So, a mysterious girl falls from the sky and Mr. Dominic Campbell, of all people, panics and calls the police? How adorable!"_

"Shut up."

"_I had no idea you were so altruistic! I have a gold medal and a key to the city waiting for you when you come back. We'll be sure to throw a parade in your honor." _

"Shut up."

I heard the sound of hysterical laughter over the line. It sounded like Magnolia was there too. Of course.

Maggie would never miss a chance to laugh at me. The two of us, being the Guardians of what are widely considered the two lamest types in existence, had developed a bit of a friendly rivalry. She started it. She'd insulted normal types when I'd first joined the group, and apparently she felt that my retort of 'well at least they're better than grass types' deserved a punch to the stomach. I would have punched her back had she not been both a girl and two years younger than me. Our constant arguments became more good-natured after a while, and now we insult each other more for fun than out of actual dislike.

There was also the sound of Eric yelling at them to quiet down.

Eric and I, on the other hand, held a mutual aversion towards each other. This was somewhat fueled by the fact that I couldn't punch him even if I wanted to (and believe me, I've tried) and vice versa. Like, seriously. The fact that my fist literally went straight through his face freaked out the both of us. He's arrogant, always sneaks up on me, and thinks that he's too good to actually use a door every once and a while. Yes, I get it. You can walk through a freaking wall. That doesn't mean you have to do it every three seconds. I don't know what the hell his problem with me is, though. Maybe it's just my tendency to challenge his ideas or authority or whatever. Freaking perfectionist. Geez.

"_Fine." _I could practically hear Kelly rolling her eyes._ "All joking aside, what happened? I thought you said you were just going for a run."_

"I stopped for some target practice with the gun I got yesterday."

"_Oh, please don't tell me you shot the poor girl out of the sky. Were you aiming for her bird? And what were you doing shooting in the middle of a tornado, anyway?"_

"The tornado hadn't started yet. And the 'poor girl' wasn't riding a bird up there."

"_Wait… You mean-"_

"Yep."

"_Wow. That explains the tornado, I guess. How bad was it?"_

"Very. Look, I'll tell you all about it when I get back, okay? The police are supposed to show up soon."

"_Oh fine, my benevolent, noble, meritorious hero. We'll see you at your award ceremony!"_

"Yeah, shut up." At that point I wished that I had one of those flip phones so I could hang up really dramatically, but I had to settle for pushing the 'end call' button with much more force than necessary.

It was another five minutes before some police people and a couple EMTs showed up from Oreburgh. I was honestly surprised that they took so long to get somewhere so close, but I guess it must've been a pain to get past all the wreckage from the tornado. I showed them where the flying girl that I still couldn't remember the name of (damn it, I really should've asked Kelly) had fallen and repeated the entire story to the police.

My name, for the time being, was Dave Greene. Dave was on vacation from Unova. Dave did not know who the girl was. Dave was very freaked out about dead people falling from the sky. Or people dying as a result of falling from the sky. Or maybe just because of the giant tornado. Whatever. The point is that being Dave became very tiresome after the first two seconds.

When Dave was finally done with all of the talking and questions, I walked back the way that I came.

I'd had enough of running for one day.

* * *

**Today, we got a closer look at Dominic Campbell, Guardian of Normal, master of stat changes and healing!**

**It might be a while until the next update, just warning you. My spring break's ending so my free time's going to drop back down to nearly zero again.**


End file.
